At the suggestion of one of our Norfolk Record Office repackaging volunteers we were lucky enough to visit the John Innes Centre Library and Archives ( https://www.jic.ac.uk/research-impact/scientific-facilities/library-and-archives/) recently with a group of our fantastic volunteers.

The John Innes Centre Library and Archives care for and preserve historical material from the study of genetics, plant science and microbiology, and look after a library with over 400 years of botanical literature.  

We were introduced to the library and archives by the archivist, and we were able to browse a selection of documents in the in the Rare Books Room.

The oldest book in the collection is the Orus Sanitatis with woodblock illustrations dated 1511.  This early herbal is a mixture of fact, myth and imagination.

One of the favourites with the group was this beautifully illustrated guide to the cultivation of fruit gardens dating to 1729, the illustrations of delicate peach blossom being particularly beautiful.

With spring in the air outside of the Rare Books Room, it was a treat to see the illustration of an anemone from this 1832 edition of William Woodville’s Medical Botany.

It’s not just all about the plants….A nineteenth-century watercolour book by Anna Sophia Clitherow, included these insect illustrations.

It was fantastic to see a letter from Charles Darwin to Professor Flower asking for his advice, though the handwriting was difficult to decipher, even for the best palaeographers amongst our number.

Find out more about the John Innes Historical Collections here

We were very grateful to be able to visit this wonderful library and archive, members of the public and researchers can visit the library by appointment.